This work is a scientific book, so it is not surprising that there is almost no narrative, no storytelling to draw the reader in. The words are simply laid out in a straightforward manner.

But in the midst of these bland and difficult sentences, powerful words like "natural selection," "struggle," "evolution," and "natural selection" appear from time to time.

These words will stand alone as a "summary" of this vast and difficult book.

For me, it was a very interesting experience to read this book while thinking about the reasons why it has taken the world by storm.

This book was an exciting work that explained what I most wanted to know: why Darvin and Marx took the world by storm so much! This is interesting!

I have referred to this work in my previous reading of Marx's "Capitalism".

The author's theory that "The Theory of Capital" is so difficult to understand and so vast that "its incomprehensibility, on the contrary, was a major reason why the world treated it like a Bible" was very interesting.

Indeed, there are points in this work that make me think, "I see what you mean," and it is written in a way that makes it easy to understand how exploitation takes place.

However, whether it is really a correct theory is something that must be tested quite rigorously.

If Marx's theory were so weak that it could be easily contradicted, it would not have had such an impact on the world. After all, Marx's theory is difficult. But despite this, it has an overwhelming power of agitation to move people. I felt that this is the strength of Marx's thought.

In this work we get to know Marx the journalist, not Marx the giant thinker who wrote "Capitalism".

Marx goes back to 1848 to discuss how the December 1851 coup d'état took place and what the underlying circumstances were.

Read social trends, analyze them thoroughly, and present them in print.

I felt that it was because of Marx as such a journalist that the later "Capitalism" was written.

Marx was 30 years old when he wrote this book. It was another 19 years after that "Capitalism" was published.

Marx was already in his twenties, living in exile as a dissident journalist, but he was not world famous.

It is truly remarkable that this work written by Marx has become "the most read book of our time, except for religious books," and "a book that has been read by hundreds of millions of people around the world during the past century, and for a great many of them, memorized.

The German Ideology was not published during their lifetime and only saw the light of day in 1932.
I have to admit that it is tough to say whether I understand their ideas by reading this book.

However, I think that experiencing the severity of the situation was the most important thing for me this time. I am grateful to have learned that one of the difficulties of Marx-Engels is due to "the flaw of not being able to grasp the meaning and context of the text in the first place," and to have also been able to see the sheer volume of the manuscript.

リカードの作品を読んだ後だとマルサスの文章は非常に優しく感じられます。想像していたよりもはるかに読みやすくまとめられている本だなというのが私の感想でした。

It was a gratifying experience for me to read the source of the famous "Malthusian Laws". It was also sobering for me to think that Marx and Engels were studying these works of economics so hard.

当たり前のことではありますが、マルクスも無から『資本論』をはじめとした経済理論を生み出したわけではありません。マルクスは鬼のような勉強家です。マルクスはこうしてアダム・スミスやリカードウの著作を読み耽り、自らの説を構築していったのでありました。

そうしたマルクスの側面を知る上でもこの本を読めたのは大きな意味があったなと思います。

私自身はこの本が難しすぎて完全にお手上げでしたがウルリケ・ヘルマンの解説によってこの本の大きな意味を知ることができました。

この本は解説と一緒に読むことをお勧めします。

人間道徳の本質は何なのか。そしてそこにおいて大きな役割を果たす共感とは何なのか。

アダム・スミスはこの著作で明らかにしていきます。

私がこの本を読んで驚いたのはアダム・スミスの観察力の鋭さでした。

読んでいて思わず「よく観てるな～この人は」とうならざるをえない場面が何度もありました。

今回の記事ではずいぶん「驚いた」という言葉を使ってしまいましたが、仕方ありません。実際この本を読んで私は驚きっぱなしだったのです。それだけこの本の衝撃は大きかったのです。

これは名著です！ぜひ読んで頂きたい作品です！おすすめです！